


The Shadows That Make the Girl You Undo

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Pacify [3]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Choking, F/M, Feelings, Rough Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:32:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3249833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So there's this whole Thing. With what Beth wants suddenly. With what she wants done to her. It's freaking Daryl out. </p><p>It's freaking him out mostly because of how much he likes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadows That Make the Girl You Undo

**Author's Note:**

> Can you write introspective porn? I think you can write introspective porn and I believe I have done so. Here it is.
> 
> Title source/soundtrack for this is ["Lights On" by FKA twigs,](https://youtube.com/watch?v=FLb1T3JVOWs) who appears to be My Blessed Lady of Smut.

It's freaking him out is what it's doing. 

At some point in this whole thing it occurred to him that he needed to take some kind of inventory, that if he didn't get some kind of handle on it everything was going to fly off of any handle he could possibly get on it. Because this is... He shouldn't be capable of this, he's tried _so hard_ to not be capable of this, and this is the girl he'd do anything for, give anything for, for whom he'd lay down and die and then proceed to walk across Hell and back for any reason she cared to give him. This is the girl who changed everything. 

This is the girl the loss of whom, when for a little while he thought she was gone forever, made him into something that wasn't a person but a moving hole in space. A patch of total blankness. A whole new kind of nobody.

A whole new kind of nothing. 

And getting her back changed everything all over again. Something like that happens, you do the thing where you swear you'll never let them go, you'll never see them hurt, where if someone even _threatens_ to harm them it's insta-death. Or very close to the same. You lose something and you get a glimpse of what an entire stretch of existence is like without them, and they become more precious to you than your own life. If they were already that precious, they become more precious than _anyone else's_ life. 

So. 

He shouldn't have done it to begin with. That was bad enough. What's worse - unspeakably worse - is that he liked it. 

Liked it _so much._

No idea where it came from. Where after weeks and weeks of being gentle with her - learning her and how to make her feel good, how to make her gasp and moan and say his name in that way which completely blows his mind, how to make her have to press her fingers against her mouth to muffle her little cries - suddenly it had been total second nature to bend her over that table in that cramped, stuffy shed and bind her hands behind her back with his belt and fuck her so hard he _knew_ he was hurting her, and not care. 

Or, no. Care. Care because he wanted more of it. Wants more of it. 

Since then, his hands on her throat, squeezing. He's not sure he would call it choking - _come on, she's genuinely struggling for breath sometimes, you're fucking choking her, stop kidding yourself_ \- but he's so aware, pinning her under him and fucking her into the mattress, of how he could break her. Just snap her like a twig. She's not fragile, not by any stretch; he knows her body by now, knew it before they finally figured this out and started _being_ together, and he knows how strong she is. She's all deceptively slender, wiry muscle. He wouldn't want to actually go up against her. He could take her but before he did she would fuck him up. 

But there, in that bed, in that room, he could break her. And the thought is so horrifying that he almost can't deal with it. God, never. Never. That's not him and that can't ever be him, because he loves her so much that sometimes he literally doesn't know what to do with himself. 

But that she's letting him. Wants him to do that. Wants him to be that strong with her. 

Knows that he _knows_ how strong she is. 

Trusts him.

_God._

So he lies with her after, wraps her up in his arms and looks at her even after she's asleep, that soft smile curving her lips. These times, she looks more relaxed than he's almost ever seen. Not just fucked out but something deeper. Sweeter. He looks at her and he runs his fingers up and down her neck, her shoulder, over the dip of her waist and the slight swell of her hip, so gentle, and he looks at the bruises already forming here and there and he's lost in some weird, baffling liminal space between _I am so fucked up_ and _how perfect is this._

His girl and she trusts him, and for some reason she wants this. And in the end he's happy to give it to her because he would give her anything, but there's also how he can't stop staring at the bruises, and the memory of what he did to put them there. 

Practically throwing her onto the bed when they're alone in the house and they don't have to worry so much about being quiet, throwing her and shoving her down, pinning her hands over her head as he literally tears her panties off. So: bruises on her wrists, on her shoulders - tick that off the list. 

Flipping her over and using her hips to wrench her ass into the air, because to put it mildly he loves that position more than he expected to; bruises on her hips - tick that off too.

Hands on her neck. Hands on her neck in all kinds of ways, all sorts of arrangements of their bodies. Regardless of how strong she is, she's small and she's very flexible and she's easy to move around, easy to manhandle. Hands on her neck, holding her in place while he pushes his fingers into her mouth, makes her suck them, makes her suck them after he's been fucking her with them. Makes her taste herself; she _really_ likes that. Bruises on her neck - which she'll have to get creative about hiding later - and more on her wrists. Tick and tick.

Just generally all over. Her arms, her thighs - she bruises easily. Tick tick tick. Like a fucking clock. 

Counting down. 

Counting down until she wants something else, something _new,_ and he has to take inventory all over again. And he has a very dim sense of some of the other possibilities; they haven't made use of the belt again but he has Ideas there, stuff he hasn't worked up the courage to tell her about.

Anyway, talking about this is unsurprisingly difficult. But they should talk. Because this is kind of freaking him out, and he's so terrified of actually hurting her. Hurting her in a way she won't want, won't like, because he's genuinely not sure how he would forgive himself for that, because she's the girl who changed everything - _twice_ \- and now, looking at her sleeping next to him with the dawn light making her glow, sweat still shining on her skin, that little smile and those beautiful marks she wanted him to make...

And God, he just loves her so much. That's really what it comes down to. 

So maybe if that's what it comes down to, and that's what's true, this doesn't need to be freaking him out quite as much as it is. 

She's _strong._

Every time this happens he gets to be reminded of it all over again. She's strong, and she must love him too; otherwise, why would she trust him this much? 

And if he's really this terrified of hurting her... Maybe he doesn't need to be so afraid that he will. 

Those scars on her. Those were the first things he had to include in his inventory, the first things he had to figure out. The one on her cheek, on her forehead... and the Other One. The one it took him so long to work up the courage to even touch. But now that he can, somehow he likes to. Loves to. Touch her, each one. Kiss them. Be reminded. She was gone and she came back, because she's strong. 

These are different, the marks he gives her. But somehow they're also the same. They fade, they heal, and in the end she's fine, and she always was fine. He never had the power to change that anyway. When things were bad she fought him off. Fought him off and was still there when he broke, when she _made_ him break. The truth is that he doesn't break her. She breaks _him._

His incredible, wonderful, beautiful girl. 

He doesn't want to be terrified of this. He doesn't want it to freak him out. He wants to give it to her, like a gift, and he wants to be glad in it.

So looking at her now, fighting sleep because he can't take his eyes off her, he kisses the scar on her cheek, he kisses the bruise on her shoulder, and he gently - so gently - lifts her wrist and kisses the bruise there too. 

Turns it and kisses the thin white line on its inside. 

He loves her and she's strong. 

In the end, when he's taking inventory, he - finally, now, at least for the moment - thinks he can probably scrub everything else off the list. Everything but those two items. Look at them, put them in their places of honor on the shelf, turn out the lights and close the door. 

Lay his head down on the pillow, pull her closer against him, and - just for now - not be freaked out anymore.

Tick.

Tick.


End file.
